A Fighting Chance

Sure, I knew it would be there, but seeing it in black-and-white was a drop-dead serious moment for me. I knew that all across Massachusetts millions of voters would see what I was seeing—a choice between two very different people, a choice between two very different visions for our country. If the voters chose me and my vision, they would be asking me to carry their hopes for a better America. Voting always gives me goose bumps, but today I stood for a few seconds longer, thinking about what it would mean to have a chance to go to the US Senate to fight for working families.

After we voted, we piled all the kids and grandkids into the Blue Bomber and a couple of rented vans and zipped around eastern Massachusetts, visiting polling places and union halls, phone banks and campaign offices, urging on the teams that were still knocking on doors and holding signs. By early afternoon, we were starved, and we stopped at the Five Guys in Medford for hamburgers. When we walked in, a woman in her fifties was sitting near the door; she looked up and yelled, “Holy s**t! It’s Elizabeth Warren!”

She recovered slightly, and after glancing at the three seven-year-old girls who were with me, she apologized. Then she said, “I guess I didn’t think you were real.” I knew what she meant: to most people, politics seems like something that happens in a faraway place, not in the local Five Guys.

In the early evening, we all headed to the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in downtown Boston to wait for results. Children and grandchildren and volunteers and state officials crowded into noisy rooms. People bubbled with cheer and early signs of victory. (“Voting is heavy in Lynn!” “They need more rides in Brockton!”) But we still had a long way to go.

I slipped away to an empty room and practiced my speech. No, I practiced both my speeches—a concession speech and a victory speech. This wasn’t the moment to take anything for granted.

Shortly after the polls closed, I went into the bathroom to change clothes. It was the first quiet moment I’d had since bounding out of bed before daylight. As I dressed, I thought about my mother. Would she be happy with the way I’d turned out? I’d gotten married and had children—and grandchildren—and Bruce and I owned a home and had saved money for our retirement. And somewhere along the line, I had decided to go to Washington and try to make a difference.

Mother had been afraid for me, not wanting me to venture out. But she had ventured out. When we needed her, she pulled on that black dress and blew her nose and did something she had never done before. She showed me what it meant to grow up, to be responsible, to do what needed to be done. And now the daughter of a telephone operator and a maintenance man might be going to the United States Senate.

The next few hours were a blur, but then one station flashed the headline and soon another: WARREN BEATS BROWN. Suddenly the race was over. Later we learned that the margin was big: 54–46.

The weekend before the election, our volunteers had knocked on more than three hundred thousand doors and made more than seven hundred thousand phone calls in what I’m told may have been the largest get-out-the-vote drive the state had ever seen. The effort paid off: people turned out in droves. It was the highest turnout for any election ever held in Massachusetts—an astonishing 73 percent. That was thrilling to me: no one is going to strangle democracy in our state!

It was also the most expensive Senate election in the entire nation that year. Wall Street contributed truckloads of money to try to keep me out of the Senate, but in the end it didn’t work. Senator Brown’s campaign raised $35 million, but to my amazement, we raised $42 million, and more than 80 percent of our contributions were for $50 or less. I still have trouble grasping how much money that was. I’m stunned by how many people sacrificed and by how much effort it took to raise so much money. But I saw at least a small silver lining: The People’s Pledge held. Maybe—just maybe—we created a new model for reducing the stranglehold of the Super PAC.

Finally, it was time for me to walk to the hotel’s ballroom and appear onstage. As I stepped out, I was hit by a wave—a cheer that rose as a single sound. I looked out at all these people, packed in tight, standing and roaring their excitement. I saw a sea of faces, but I knew these faces. I saw hundreds of people I had come to know during this campaign, one at a time. People who held signs and made calls. People who urged me on when victory seemed so far off. People who believed that even a first-time candidate could win a tough race if we worked hard enough for what we believed.

And we did it.

Tens of thousands of volunteers did it.

Women did it. Women broke with their husbands and boyfriends and brothers and voted for me by a knock-your-socks-off twenty-point margin.

Unions did it. Vets did it. The LGBT community and black ministers and small-business owners did it. Latino activists and Asian leaders did it. Students and scientists did it. Mothers and dads and grandmothers and granddads did it. Even kids did it.

The people did it.

What was the lesson of that day? When we fight, we can win. And when we get really fired up and fight shoulder to shoulder, we can do some pretty amazing things.